Black Gate

Have you ever heard the phrase, ‘This is going to be the next INSERT ICONIC FRANCHISE HERE’? I’m pretty sure we all have, but the one that sticks out most starkly in my memory was from 1997.

I’d recently moved to Maryland and I well remember seeing the trailers for the Bruce Willis science fiction vehicle The Fifth Element. The billing indicated it to be, ‘The next Star Wars’. I was so excited, I dragged my then twenty-five year old wife to the theater in hopes the billing might have some kind of thread of truth.

I well remember her reaction to the film, and most appreciably the movie’s use of the word ‘perfect’. It was truly a painful experience, one that is as fresh today as it was then, and yet over the next couple of years I not only forgave The Fifth Element for not being the next Star Wars, but learned to appreciate it on a level I never thought possible.

I mean, when you get down to it, the next Star Wars wasn’t even ‘The next Star Wars’, Phantom Menace was a complete debacle that somehow manages to look like a Academy Award winner next to The Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith.

Fifth Element isn’t Star Wars, it’s anything but, and yet if you don’t make that connection and simply try to view the movie as a solo performance it’s truly a fun piece of science fiction. Willis renders a great Die Hard-like role, and Milla Jovovich is indeed ‘perfect’, much to my wife’s volcanic fury at the assessment.

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You all know I’m a total art geek, right? I mean, that should be plainly obvious simply by the titles of the blogs I write. To me, the nature of art is tied into my DNA, and although I don’t practice it myself, I certainly find untold joy in the viewing.

I’ve written before about my early years and the influence fantasy art had on me during those times. Without book covers, I’d simply have never begun reading, and therefore my choice of profession would have changed from writer to ornamental iron retailer. Certainly selling, installing, and designing ornamental iron isn’t a bad profession, and there is money in it if the markets are right, but I can’t help but feel a sadness when I consider the joyless toll such a career would have taken on me.

So, instead of being financially secure and responsible, I’ve somehow found myself in L.A. as a writer, editor, and jack-of-all-traders literary amalgamation. All this, because of art, and more particularly the art of old school TSR’s Advanced Dungeons & Dragons.

If the above is the keystone to my existence, then I fervently hold to it as all that is meaningful in my professional life. That said, I find the 1980s, in particular, an untold inspirational period, no matter how silly our clothing choice may have been during that decade.

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In January I contacted Jon Schindehette over at the ArtOrder about possibly running a contest on the site that would help show some of the promising talent in the field of fantasy. It was my concept to devote five special spotlight posts right here on Black Gate to a collection of new artists as judged by a panel of veteran artists and art directors in the field.

Jon loved the idea, and by February we had a contest running that ended up featuring more than a hundred and twenty-five entries from all over the globe. What were they painting? Well, if this is Art Evolution, then of course they all took a stab at Lyssa, the now iconic female wizardress that has been defined by fantasy art legends since the series began in 2010.

I must say, the experience of running this challenge was a total thrill. Watching a bevy of incredible artists use WIPNation to show the progress of their vision for Lyssa on an almost daily basis allowed me a vision of what working in an old school art department at TSR must have been like.

There were science fiction Lyssas, primal Lyssas, steampunk Lyssas, you name it, and each artist brought such a fantastic flair to what he or she did. However, when it all came down to nuts and bolts, there could only be three winners for 2012, as judged by such talents as Todd Lockwood, Jeff Laubenstein, Jeff Easley, and Lauren Panepinto.

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I grew up under the threat of a nuclear holocaust. Perhaps I’m not a child who was taught to jump under their desk when the nuke hit like those of the 50s, but I watched and wondered as President Reagan threatened the Soviet Union with Star Wars and certainly found some perverted joy in watching moves like The Day After and Threads.

At one point, I was thoroughly convinced I’d die in a nuclear attack well before I ever had sex. It’s true, and I even broke down and admitted as much to my mother who assured me that would not be the case. Still, how could she know? Did she control the secret briefcase with the red button that launched mutually assured destruction like the President? I think not! But alas, doomsday never came… and once again mothers everywhere were proved wise in the face of their twelve year-old children.

Still, my fascination with that A-bomb only grew once I started playing D&D in the early 80s. By the time I had a functional relationship with the rules of the game, probably 8th Grade, I began crafting my own post-apocalyptic RPG called ‘Future Warrior’.

I very much wish I could share some of the covers for that game with you, but they’ve found their way into storage (a tragedy, I know). Still, I had a core rulebook and four distinct supplements for the game all under my first LLC moniker RST Hobbies, which is of course the reverse of TSR. (Note: RST are my initials, Roger Scott Taylor, which isn’t the only odd connection I have to TSR because I also share a birthday, July 27th, with Gary Gygax)

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Yes, it’s true, I’m posting a day late on my Art of the Genre blog, but hey, when you’ve been the Gamemaster for six straight days of 14 hour gaming, I think even the great John O’Neill can cut me a little slack. I’m mean, this is my vacation after all, so I think having anything, even this odd article, to post should show how much I love my readers!

Still, it was kind of tough, amid all the chaos of gaming, to settle in on a subject for this week’s AtoG. However, the more I sat around the gaming table, the more I began to understand the Art of being a Gamemaster and how that translates into something cool.

I mean, I’ve been doing this since I was a tween… well actually before the word tween even existed. Even early on I would sit at a table, screens before me, and paint pictures with words that are vivid enough to keep my friends coming back for more. And when I say coming back for more, I mean really, truly, coming back, no matter from where, for more story spinning than I’ve the right to foist on you here.

I’ve gamed with the same group of friends since middle school, and it’s not like we all live three minutes from one another. Nope, we are now stretched from Maryland to California, but one week a year, we make a sojourn back to the Midwest to roll dice like we did when we were twelve.
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I never wanted to watch Pokémon. It’s a phenomena that came WAY after I was too old for it, and in essence was driven by collectable card games ala Magic the Gathering which I stayed well away from at all costs.

Sure, I knew Pikachu as it’s pretty hard to be alive in this world without knowing the electric-type mouse Pokémon as well as his constant companion of Ash Ketchum. But truly, that’s as far as it went.

Then came 2006 when my son was born and I named him Ashur, which of course would get shortened to Ash at convenience as he grew. Did that name have anything to do with Pokémon? Nope, although there was a bit of Evil Dead in there to be honest, but for the most part it just fit. Three days before my Ash arrived, his cousin Iris was born. Again, nothing odd about that occurrence at the time, and yet these days I think about the event as I watch Pokémon: Black and White and scratch my head because the two main characters of that version… Ash and Iris.

Yes, I watch Pokémon with my son. It can be rather addicting, as any quest cartoon can, each adventure building on the next as Ash continues on his journey to be a Pokémon Master. My son loves it, collects plush Pokémon, and studies his Pokémon: Black and White handbook like it’s the gospel.

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At some point in my distant past I fell in love with something I didn’t have. I suppose it happens a lot to gamers, especially with younger folk and those who grew up before the advent of the internet. In days now long gone, I would flip through a Dragon Magazine and marvel at all the titles I found available in the advertisements.

How many times have I kicked myself for not being able to lay hands on a copy of Aftermath? Could I imagine a more Tolkien-like fantasy system with Runequest? What incredible fun would it have been to play a round of Talisman?

So many games, so little time, and certainly even less money. In those days I was required by circumstance to create most of my own worlds and adventures, although I did partake of Greyhawk and the Forgotten Realms.

Still, if there was one world that I always felt I missed out on it was the D&D Basic Mystara. I’d begun my gaming career with Basic D&D, but with Mark [my lifelong DM] having all the AD&D hard cover books, I moved on to ‘bigger and better’ before I really had a chance to fully vest myself in the Basic system, especially the setting.

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